4 tips to help centralize your team on a global scale

Change isn’t easy. This is especially true within global organizations. So what do you do if you’re faced with instilling change on a global scale throughout your global organization? 

We recently held a webinar on this topic with Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi and author of “Take Your Company Global,” who shared some practical steps on how to build a globally equitable organization and align your teams across borders.

If you missed our previous article on how to build a globally equitable organization (GEO), it may be helpful to start there to make sure you know all the steps involved in creating a GEO and why it’s increasingly important. 

But let’s say you’ve already done your due diligence and have all the stars aligned to stand up a globally equitable organization. What are the next steps? What’s the best way to move forward with the least resistance? In this article, we’ll cover four tips to help you centralize your team on a global scale. 

One thing that has worked well for Nataly in the past is to create an internal steering committee, or advisory board.

“A steering group might sound scary and like a lot of work, but it actually doesn't have to be. It can just be one meeting a month, or even one meeting a quarter…But you have a regular cadence, and you have agreement of what you're driving toward. And it can be very effective."

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

Building the committee with executive sponsors can prove to be helpful, as they have high visibility within the company and are likely to have stronger connections with other members of leadership. 

But be sure to have roles and expectations clearly defined once everyone has signed on to the group, as well as a regularly scheduled, agreed upon cadence of meetings and check-ins to make the committee a success. 

Think of it as though you’re planning an external event. Who’s driving the agenda? What are the roles each team member has to play? Which leadership member has the greatest network to leverage? What has to happen to make it a success?   

“I would encourage you to use project managers who are really good at this and at making very effective use of people's time, because [if not] you won't get executive buy-in. They'll just say, ‘I don't like that meeting. I'm not gonna attend it anymore. It's not very well run.’ You need to engage your executives and make sure they love the meeting, and that they feel like there's a lot of action that happens within it."

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

Something as simple as enlisting people to join the cause can have a major impact. 

Start with groups of people or individuals you’re already friendly with to help join the cause. This will help you build up your advocates and increase the number of those who want to be involved in making global equity a priority. 

“If you can’t start big, start somewhere."

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

And this doesn’t have to be limited to people on your team! You can observe others' interest levels and recruit people from other teams (or even place one of your team members with another group to increase collaboration), which can result in greater support across the organization. 

Nataly emphasizes that a major point to remember is that you need to give every aspect of this time. So if you’re in it, you should be in it for the long haul. Because like any massive change initiative, connecting local and global teams takes time.

“If you're gonna do all this work, ideally, you are committing to the long haul. And you are going to invest the time that it takes to have an impact on such a massive change initiative.”

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

If you can’t hire a person whose job it is to “own” and run the change effort, start by making it part of someone’s job on your team. But as she shared before, you can always start small and build from there. 

“I'm a huge advocate of ‘let's not boil the ocean.’ Let's just get started, take action. See if it creates a ripple effect and move it forward. And usually just by that little test we can learn a lot and decide if we want to invest more time and resources in it."

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

Nataly’s final tip to help centralize your team on a global scale is to unify around technology. 

“ I will say this from the heart and with tremendous conviction: It really helps to centralize around technology when you're centralizing around a common technology. This will really help you to share learnings."

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

Think of things like a CRM tool such as Salesforce or a project management tool like Trello. Technology can be used as a magnet to bring people in when it's providing a solution to a problem, because it eliminates any extra work or communication on their end. 

“A Zappi, we're connecting our customers through our platform, and they are understanding the benefits of connected insights, connecting business units, connecting geographies, connecting markets, through a common platform. And I do think that is a way to fast track centralization.”

- Nataly Kelly, CMO at Zappi

So use technology to your advantage where you can! It will help centralize your team, wherever they are, especially true if the majority of the team is already familiar with the technology. 

There are many relationships to build and processes to put in place when shifting how a business operates — especially on a global scale. We hope this article provides valuable insight into some initial steps you can take to get there.

For those of you who did not attend the webinar, “Global & local: Balance of power or powerful everywhere?” you can watch it in full below.